The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  “Not Okello, but the archangels and the seraphim. They would stop here after they attacked a village.”

  “Can you lead us to the main camp?”

  Isaac grasped the watch hanging around his neck as if he thought we were going to take it back. “I don’t know. They went different ways.”

  “How far is the main camp?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Screw this, Daniel. If we leave the riverbed and start wandering through the grass, then we’re definitely going to get lost.”

  “We’ll stay here and build a fire,” Daniel said. “If Okello’s men are in the area, they’ll see the smoke and track us down.”

  I sat down at the base of the tree, took out my Swiss Army knife and opened a can of sausages. Daniel built a fire and worked hard to keep it going. The wind pushed the plume of smoke off to the west, a dirty gray line smeared across the sky.

  I wandered around the area and found Isaac down in the riverbed. He was building a little fort with sticks and boulders, just like I used to do when I was a boy. I took a few pictures of him working, then put away my camera and picked up a stone. “Want some help?” I asked. He didn’t tell me to go away so I figured it was all right.

  We started working together, but neither of us spoke. I don’t know how to deal with children in general, and war victims like Isaac are in their own special category of pain. There was nothing I could say to him that would take the images of death and killing out of his head, so I stayed quiet and carried rocks. After two hours of labor we had built a little stone house with some branches for a roof. Isaac and I sat inside it together, peering out one of the windows and watching the smoke from Daniel’s fire drift past the mother tree.

  “So who are the archangels and the seraphim?”

  “The archangels are the commanders. You become a seraphim when they give you a rifle.”

  “Were you a seraphim?”

  Isaac nodded and turned away from me. He looked tired and defeated, like a lonely old man.

  “Want some chewing gum, Isaac? I think I have a few sticks in my camera case.”

  The boy crawled through the door and walked away. I sat in our little house for a while, hoping he’d come back, but the game was over.

  I WOKE UP the next morning, ready to argue with Daniel. There was no more food and it was difficult to find water. Time to go home.

  Daniel vanished into the grass for a few hours, then came back. It was nine o’clock in the morning. He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I thought you might want to stay.”

  “I’ll go to the edge of the cliff, Nicky. But I won’t jump off. If you do that, you can’t write anymore.”

  We left the mother tree and headed back down the riverbed toward Kosana. Daniel moved slowly and he kept glancing around him as if, somehow, the thornbushes and boulders would provide him with a new plan.

  We found a muddy patch of ground but no water. When we started walking again I saw something moving through the grass on the right side of the riverbank. We stopped walking as four guerrillas emerged from the undergrowth and pointed their rifles at us. The tallest man was about nineteen or twenty years old. He had dreadlocks and a scraggly beard and wore a ragged blue T-shirt and military pants.

  The other three guerrillas were small, shoeless boys with bits of dry grass in their hair. Each carried a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a panga knife. The boys had thrust their knives in their belts, but the tall man wore his in a leather scabbard slung around his neck. Everyone looked hungry and intent, like a pack of hyenas that had just found a limping gazelle.

  Isaac stood very straight, his arms at rigid angles, and stared at the tall man’s rifle. I licked my lips and tried to look confident while Daniel stepped forward.

  “Jina langu Daniel. Jina lako nani?”

  “I speak English,” said the tall man. “Better than your Swahili.”

  “I’m Daniel McFarland. I write for British, German, and American newspapers. This is my partner, Nicky Bettencourt. He takes photographs for the newspapers.”

  The tall man motioned his rifle at Isaac. “And this is the traitor who brought you here.”

  “Samuel Okello wants to talk to us. We’ve traveled thousands of miles to see him. He will punish anyone who harms our guide.”

  The tall man looked startled when he heard Okello’s name. He turned to the three seraphim and spoke in their tribal language. The three boys lowered their rifles but kept their hands on the trigger guards.

  “If you want to walk to our camp, then we must blindfold you.”

  “There’s no reason to use blindfolds. We’re journalists, not soldiers. We’ve come from London to write down the Prophet’s words. You shouldn’t make him angry.”

  The tall man looked frightened. He seemed to think that Samuel Okello might appear in front of us and punish him for making the wrong choice. The three seraphim kept glancing over their shoulders, waiting for the command to shoot, but the tall man snapped his jaw shut so that it made a faint clicking sound. He raised his rifle and motioned to the grass.

  “I am the archangel Piramoi. If you’re lying to me about the Prophet, all of you will be killed.”

  Piramoi led us, single file, out of the riverbed and down a narrow path. The three seraphim were behind us, whispering. I was too tired and thirsty to be scared. My camera bag and travel bag kept bouncing against my legs, and I wanted to throw them away. Isaac walked in front of me with his head bowed like a criminal going to his execution. Every time the path split into different directions, Piramoi knelt down and searched for a small stone that had been hidden in the grass. The sun was falling toward the horizon. We followed it west for several hours; then the marker stones guided us northeast. I was about to sit down and refuse to go any farther when we climbed a slope to a plateau dotted with trees. We pushed through the grass and bumped into a pregnant teenage girl sitting in the doorway of a thatch-roofed hut. She stared at us as if we had just arrived from Jupiter, then jumped up and followed the procession.

  The trail led us past two other huts and a long brick building with empty windows. I found out later that the brick building had once been part of a British military outpost. Samuel Okello was wary of government scout planes so he hadn’t cleared away the tall grass and thornbushes. Every structure was covered with thatching that blended in with the surrounding countryside.

  The crowd around us became larger. Most of them were boys carrying rifles, but there were a few girls looking dirty and scared. Two vehicles were parked beside the building: a Toyota Land Cruiser with a UGANDA PARKS insignia on the door and a blue van that probably had been stolen from some matatu driver. Grass had been bound in sheaves and tied to the roofs of both vehicles.

  Piramoi went inside the building. Another archangel came out a few minutes later and demanded our passports and travel bags. I managed to keep my two cameras, but an older seraphim grabbed my sun hat. A hat was worth something in the bush, but my cameras were completely useless.

  We stood there for twenty minutes while the seraphim stared at us as if we were rare beasts that had been driven out of the grass. Finally, Piramoi and two other archangels came out of the house and everyone stopped talking.

  “You go with the others,” Piramoi said to Daniel.

  “What about Reverend Okello?”

  “That is the order. You stay with the others.” And he led us through the camp to a stick and thorn enclosure that had once been used as a cattle pen. The seraphim pulled the branch back and Piramoi motioned us forward. Inside the enclosure were two thatched-roof shelters that reminded me of beach cabanas. Six people sat in the shade on straw mats.

  A young man with a blond beard and ponytail ran over to us. “Deutsche?” he asked. “British? American?”

  “American.”

  “You’re from the embassy?”

  “No, we’re journalists.”

  The you
ng man looked disappointed. Without speaking another word, he turned away from us and walked over to his companions. “Not from an embassy. Not from the Red Cross. Journalists.”

  • • •

  DANIEL AND I went over to the shelters and met the hostages. We sat down and began to talk while Isaac stayed apart from us. All the hostages had suffered from malaria and dysentery. They’d been wearing the same clothes for the last four months and their shoes were falling apart. Most people assume that they’re going to act like a hero in a situation like this, but illness and malnutrition had worn them down. They had exchanged their life histories, told every story twice, and there was nothing more to say. Now they spent their time lying on the straw mats, waiting passively for their ration of millet porridge.

  Michael and Nora Barrow were from a suburb of northern New Jersey. Michael was a phone company executive who had spent most of his life giving orders, but now he’d become confused and frightened. His wife, Nora, was a nervous woman who noticed the slightest change in the daily routine. If they replaced the guards or fed them with different bowls, she concluded that Okello was getting ready to kill them.

  Ray Stokes was a short, feisty man in his sixties who ran a garage in Oxford. His wife, Livy, had become depressed, but Ray was the chief optimist of the group. He had convinced himself that American spy satellites had found Okello’s camp and that SAS commandos were about to attack in stealth helicopters.

  Joseph Henning was a German record-shop employee in his thirties who had traveled around the world for several years. Although he had lost weight, he was stronger and in better shape than the older hostages. Nora Barrow was suspicious of Joseph because he knew a little Swahili and occasionally talked to the guards.

  At the beginning of their captivity Okello had intimidated the hostages with his power. They were kept blindfolded for several days, then forced to watch one of the archangels execute a twelve-year-old girl. When some of the soldiers returned to camp with amputated hands, Okello placed a basketful of them in the hostage compound. A line of ants had flowed like a tiny black river beneath the thorn wall and across the dirt to the basket.

  Eventually, Joan Siebert, the sixth hostage, picked up the basket and gave it to one of the seraphim. “Tell the Prophet that we’ve had this long enough,” she said and the guard obeyed her.

  Joan was a small woman in her seventies, a librarian from Wisconsin who had cashed in one of her retirement funds to come to Africa. She was calm and practical, and the other hostages usually followed her lead. During the last few weeks, Joan had started to have physical problems. Her pulse was low, her hands and feet felt tingly, and she got dizzy whenever she stood up.

  “I haven’t been sick for almost forty years,” she told us. “That is, if you don’t count a hip operation. Being sick is not the way I see myself. I wake up every morning and decide that I’m going to be all right, but my body doesn’t seem to be listening.”

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “We didn’t bring any medicine.”

  “Did you bring any books?” she asked.

  “Nothing but food and water.”

  “It’s been difficult to deal with Mr. Okello, but my major problem is boredom. We just sit around all day. There’s nothing to do and no one wants to talk anymore. Lately I’ve been making a list of my ten favorite books. I argue with myself whether a particular novel should be number three or number five.”

  “What’s your first choice?” I asked.

  “Sense and Sensibility. No illustrations. With a sewn binding.”

  MILLET PORRIDGE WAS served to us around five o’clock and the hostages went through little rituals with their bowls and spoons. Daniel and I had been talking ever since we met the hostages; this was the first time I was able to sit alone and analyze the situation. We were prisoners. Okello was crazy. And there was no indication that they would release us.

  Daniel ate his food quickly, then lit one of his Turkish cigarettes and paced around the enclosure. By now I knew that he didn’t smoke very often, only when he was tense or trying to figure something out. I caught up with him and we walked together.

  “So what do you think?”

  “It’s difficult.”

  “Is Okello going to meet with us?”

  “You can’t predict much of anything, Nicky. You know that.”

  “Humor me, will you? Say something positive.”

  “They’re feeding us. If they had decided to kill us in the next few hours, they wouldn’t give us food.”

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  “There are no miracles. I only believe in the reality in front of me.”

  I went back to the shelter and finished my porridge. All the hostages had a different technique. Nora Barrow ate her ration very slowly, letting the food dissolve on her tongue. Ray Stokes divided his porridge into sections and ate bits of it over a three-hour period.

  I knew that Daniel was trying to be honest with me, but I would have appreciated something a bit more optimistic. That afternoon, I decided that everything was dependent on the size of the photograph. You could take a picture of a little boy playing with a ball, then expand the frame to his angry parents who are trying to turn him into an angry adult, then expand the frame even larger to include the nice teacher who’s going to say something inspiring or the little girl who is going to grow up and fall in love with him. And you could keep doing that with your photograph, making it larger to bring in the good things or larger still to include all the misery and pain. Daniel was right, of course—there were no miracles—but I wanted a bigger lens.

  THE RED SUN burned its way into the grass and stars began to come out. As it got dark, you could only see the silhouettes of the hostages, but they kept talking about that day’s ration and Okello’s plans.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Bettencourt?” Joan asked quietly.

  “Call me Nicky. Okay?”

  “What’s the name of the little boy who brought you here?”

  “Isaac.”

  “Was he forced to be a seraphim?”

  “Yeah. They killed his parents.”

  “What Okello and the others have done to the children is very evil. I’ve prayed but can’t forgive him.” Joan’s voice was very faint, almost overcome by the noise of the cicadas. “I’m not able to find that mercy in my heart.”

  Daniel and I hadn’t turned Isaac into a killer, but we had used him to find this place. Piramoi had said that Isaac was a traitor. The threat stayed with me and maybe that’s why Daniel also looked worried. He kept pacing around in the darkness while everyone else lay down on the mats and tried to sleep. At some time during the night, Daniel came over and joined us. Much later, Isaac got cold and lay beside me. I could hear his breathing, feel his small chest moving in and out.

  The next morning, Isaac went back to his spot at the edge of the shelter. Joan called his name, but he ignored her and stared dully at the thorn barrier. Daniel was up and moving around, only this time he wasn’t smoking a cigarette. “The next twenty-four hours are crucial,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You and I have just arrived here. We’re a new part of the equation. If we stay too long, Okello will see us as another two hostages. We can’t let him think that way.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?”

  Daniel studied the barbed-wire entrance to the enclosure. Two young guards stood on the other side with their rifles. “Let me handle this, Nicky.”

  “Go ahead. Be my guest. Just don’t do anything crazy.”

  About an hour after sunrise, Piramoi and two boys came into the enclosure with our bowls of millet and everyone lined up to get their share. When Daniel received his bowl he glanced at it contemptuously and tossed it on the ground. Piramoi looked shocked that anyone would throw away food, but before he could react Daniel passed through the open entrance and headed toward Okello’s house.

  “Come back!” shouted Piramoi. “You must stay here!” He ran after Daniel whi
le a dozen seraphim came out of their huts, shouting and waving their rifles. Standing beside the entrance, I watched Daniel walk about twenty yards, then stop in front of a wall of seraphim. He was arguing with them, not shouting, but speaking calmly. Then he turned around and headed back to the enclosure as if he had just completed his exercise for the day. The hostages and I gathered around him when he returned.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I asked for an interview.”

  “Okello won’t talk to you,” Michael Barrow said. “I’ve only seen him three times.”

  “I’ve met with Okello on two occasions,” Joan said. “The first time we discussed food. The second time was when Livy was very sick from malaria. You can talk to the man. He’s capable of a rational conversation. But you must never hesitate. He’s very skilled at seeing other people’s weaknesses.”

  “They’re coming!” shouted Ray Stokes and we stood up as the seraphim pushed open the barbed-wire gate.

  Piramoi and three small boys marched in, carrying rifles, and the archangel motioned to Daniel and me. “The Prophet wants to see you now.”

  We walked slowly across the camp to the house where Okello lived. I took out one of my cameras and glanced at Daniel. “Should I say anything?”

  “It’s not necessary. Try to get a photograph, Nicky. But don’t make it a big production.”

  About fifty seraphim were sitting in the dirt around the brick house. Using this children’s army, Okello had managed to terrorize half the country. I’d like to say that I felt sorry for them, but at that moment I was just scared. The children showed no emotion on their faces. They didn’t smile or whisper or nudge each other.

  We stopped about ten feet away from the house. Piramoi shouted something in his tribal language, then the Reverend Samuel Okello stepped through a doorway. I had been expecting someone bearded and wild looking, a sort of African John the Baptist, but Okello was a clean-shaven little man who wore a green Sudanese army uniform. His eyes were the most intimidating thing about him. When he first stared at me, I wanted to meet his eyes and challenge him, but there was such coldness there that I found myself looking down at my shoes.